


I Guess the Devil's Back

by treefrogie84



Category: Supernatural, Wayward Sisters (TV)
Genre: Gen, I went a long way to make 1 joke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-10-11 00:34:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17436476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/treefrogie84/pseuds/treefrogie84
Summary: On a day hike through the Cascades, Jody, Donna, and Patience find a small town with a dark history.





	I Guess the Devil's Back

**Author's Note:**

> This is what happens when the only thing you remember about Alf collides with your [favorite fanfic](https://archiveofourown.org/series/110651) in your head, except almost no one who reads that fanfic also reads your fic and will get the joke. [waves at both of you, you know who you are]
> 
> You can read this as part of my [Take the Love that I've Embraced](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1160675) series, although it's not explicitly part of it. There's nothing keeping it from being part 5, this one just isn't Claire focused.

They’re high up in the mountains, above the treeline, when Patience nearly collapses into a nearby boulder and stares into the valley below.

Jody and Donna stop immediately, pulling her day pack off and to the side, guiding Patience down to a nearby rock where she can sit safely. It’s taken a fair amount of practice to get to a point where they move this smoothly, but they’re there now.

Settling back to wait, Jody can barely see the remains of an old town down there, a couple rooftops breaking the treeline and something that might be a road following the river. They’re really high up-- higher than she’s comfortable with, even in the middle of summer when they don’t have to worry about sudden snowstorms.

Ahead, Donna raises her water bottle in a grinning silent toast, taking a couple of long drinks before stashing the bottle back in the side pocket of her bag.

Donna belongs out here, sunbright and cheerful, as easily at home on the top of a mountain as she is in a squad car. Hiking boots and fancy moisture wicking pants, a shirt that hurts to look at in the sun-- she’s in her element.

Jody, in her heavy jeans and boots, in dark, somber colors that just keep all the heat from the sun… is not.

(She’s miserable, actually, but doesn’t want to ruin the trip for Donna and Patience. Not after Claire and Kaia ditched out on them for a hunt and Alex had to work. Family bonding only works when the family shows up.)

Raising her own water bottle in response, Jody sucks down about a third of it before latching it to her pack’s frame. Discreetly, she dry swallows a couple of painkillers and swings her pack off and to the ground, settling on top to wait and stretch her knee out.

It takes longer than normal for Patience to snap out of her vision, which rarely bodes well. They’ve figured out that her visions happen in real time, but the longer they are, the longer she stays immersed, the more dangerous it is. A minute or two is common, five occasionally, longer than that and Jody starts wondering if Patience is trapped, if she’s ever going to come back out.

It’s nearly twenty minutes before Patience blinks back to awareness.

Donna is at her side before Jody can get up, supporting Patience as she sags. “Whatcha got going on, buttercup?”

Patience shakes her head, scrambling for her water bottle. Taking a swig, she swishes it around in her mouth, leans over and spits it out. “That town down there. Something’s there. Something _bad_.”

Jody grimaces, glancing back over the side. “Avoid like the plague bad or go marching in and deal with it like the hunters we are bad?”

“I don’t know,” Patience says slowly. She pauses for a long moment, brow furrowed. “I don’t know what I was seeing, really. It was… weird. Almost like my vision was overlapping with someone else’s.”

“Has it ever done that before?” Jody asks.

Patience shakes her head, takes another drink of water. “No, that’s why it’s so weird. And I don’t… It wasn’t like when Kaia and I fail to work together. This was different. I was seeing him as he had the vision and then the vision and…” She trails off, shrugs. “Like I said. Weird.”

Jody looks over at Donna who shrugs too. “We’ve got two choices: forward or backward. I don’t think the town is on the trail, if it matters.”

“Forward,” Patience says firmly. “I’m not going to get scared off of a hike just because of some vision.”

“Alright then.” Jody takes Donna’s hand up, stretching a bit more. “Forward it is.”

It takes them a few minutes to get themselves reassembled, pulling packs back on, re-securing water bottles. Donna sheds a layer, so she’s just in a t-shirt-- Jody can’t help but watch as Donna’s arms flex picking up her pack-- while Patience resettles something. Eventually, they’re hiking down the mountain and Jody loses track of the tiny mountain town.

 

* * *

 

“River Grove,” Donna reads off a sign, still bright and cheerful despite mile three of a five mile hike. “Pretty name at least. Wonder if there’s lunch.”

“Are you sure we followed the trail? I thought you said there weren’t any towns.” Jody raises an eyebrow, looking at the bridge that’s still intact, barely.

“I know how to follow a trail, Jodi-o. I’m sure we’re back where we’re supposed to be.” Donna grins. “Besides, I said that town wasn’t on the map. Not that there were no towns.”

“If you say so.” Jody looks around some more. Something about this place is starting to give her the creeps. “They sure aren’t spending money on their infrastructure. They’re gonna lose that bridge in the next heavy snowstorm.” Glancing back, she waits for Patience to catch up. “Whatcha think?”

“I don’t know. But I’ve not had another vision, so it has to have been somewhere else, right?”

“You’re the expert,” Donna chirps. “Let’s get moving. It’ll be quicker along the road, but harder on our joints.”

“Goodie,” Jody mutters. All the same, she reaches back, loosens the strap holding her pistol in place against her pack. She’s not loaded for anything more exotic than bears, but having it handy is comforting.

Walking through the outskirts of town is bizarre. Everywhere they look, it’s like people just… set things down and walked away. A rusted out lawn mower peeks over waist tall weeds, cars parked in the street-- nothing newer than early ‘00s-- some with their doors still open, all with broken windows.

“It’s a zombie movie,” Patience whispers. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

Donna looks over sharply, concern all over her face. “What kind of bad feeling?”

“The kind where I’ve seen Star Wars ever.” Patience rolls her eyes. “Let’s keep going.”

Jody huffs a short laugh and grins at Donna. “She’s got you there.”

Donna sticks her tongue out and they keep moving.

Nothing changes really, the deeper they get into town. Even when people lived here, it wasn’t very big-- a couple hundred, max, would be Jody’s guess-- and now it’s just… empty.

They find the first skeleton, bare and sun bleached, just a block from the town center. It looks--

“Gnawed on.” Donna stands, makes an abortive gesture to wipe her hands on her jeans. “But not scattered.”

“What would do something like that?” Patience asks. “Not animals--”

“Not the big ones anyway,” Donna agrees. “Mice maybe, or anything around that size. Anything bigger would have moved the bones around.”

“Great.” Looking up and down the street, Jody pauses. “Something’s… off. And not just the skeleton in the middle of the street.” She doesn’t fight it anymore, reaching back and pulling her pistol.

“Jodes?” Donna reaches back slowly to grab her own gun.

It takes her a moment to put the pieces together. She’s been creeped out since they got here, but never figured out why. It clicks when she glances at the trees in the yards surrounding them. It's dead silent-- no birds, no rustles in the grass from prey animals, nothing. “Where the hell are all the animals?”

They look at her blankly, like she's the one that doesn't make any goddamn sense.

“The animals, guys. Place like this, all sorts of human debris to live in and on? Should be swarming with at least mice and the things that eat them. Even without the debris, there’d be birds or something. Feral cats probably. Donna… where are the cats?”

“Alf ate ‘em?” Donna shoots back. “What are you talking about?”

“Have you seen _anything_ alive? Anything at all?”

Donna and Patience shake their heads uncertainly.

“Right, let’s go. I want out of here before this turns into even more of a horror movie.”

They hurry down the street, footsteps echoing oddly along the street. Patience keeps getting paler and paler until she stops dead, looking at a badly worn pole.

**CROATOAN** is carved, deep enough to still be legible after God knows how many years, into the pole at about eye height.

“Shit,” Patience breathes, looking up and then across the street towards a small row of shops, including what was once a medical clinic. “We gotta go! C’mon!” She takes off, sprinting, dodging abandoned cars and clusters of skeletons and bones and…

Jody doesn’t wait anymore. She and Donna run after her.

 

* * *

 

They stumble to a stop about half a mile down the road, on the other side of another bridge, this one barricaded with rusted out pickup trucks and more guns than Jody’s ever seen in any one place outside of an armory (or the Impala’s truck, but…).

“What. The fuck. Was. That?” Donna wheezes, bent over against a tree. A jay shrieks above them, pisses off a squirrel that starts chittering.

“I… don’t know.” Patience starts to look over her shoulder but thinks better of it. “But that word--Croatoan-- it was connected. It started the whole thing. And then I had to run.”

Jody drops her pack to the ground, stretches up and to the side. “Croatoan. I know it from… somewhere. I’ll look it up when we get back to town.”

Patience closes her eyes for a long moment-- long enough that Jody worries that she’s having another vision-- before shaking her head. “I don’t… Were the Winchesters here?”

Donna looks over at Jody and shrugs. “Jody-o would know better than me.”

“It was years ago,” Patience says slowly. “The double head thing is really making this hard. But I swear, Dean was about to shoot someone. But not… Dean-now. Dean-then?”

“Let’s get back to town,” Jody says firmly. “We’ll call the boys when we’re not… here.”

* * *

 

Back to their hotel, showered and fed, it’s a lot more tempting to just dismiss the whole thing as freak weirdness that won’t happen again. Except Patience is still shaken up by her vision being that out of joint with what happened.

Sighing, Jody sets her phone on speaker and calls Dean. She’d rather talk to Sam for this, but he’s gone iffy about answering her calls.

“‘lo?” Dean answers, voice scratchy. “Jody, everything ok?”

“Everything’s fine, Dean. Just had a bit of weirdness earlier and was hoping you or Sam could shed some light on it.”

“Uh, yeah. Hold on a moment.” The microphone is muffled and they hear him say something before he picks the phone back up. “What’s up?”

“What do you know about a town called River Grove, Oregon?” Patience leans over.

“River-- Are you there?” Dean asks urgently. “Get out. Right now.”

“Whoa, Dean. We’re miles away. Safe and sound.”

“ _Thank Christ_ ,” Dean mutters. “Stay out of there, both of you.”

“I’m here too, Dean,” Donna offers. “Someone’s gotta look after these two.”

“Yeah,” he sighs. “We had a hunt there. Years ago, over a decade. It was…” he trails off for a long moment. “At the time, we thought it was just one of Sam’s visions, with Azazel’s involvement. There was… a bunch of other shit though, that we didn’t find out for years.”

“Dean?” Patience asks quietly. She’s hunched over, like she’s half trying to hide. Jody’s not quite sure what to make of it, but she wraps an arm around her shoulders anyway. “Is Sam psychic?”

“He was,” Dean answers slowly. “It went away, mostly, after the whole Lucifer thing. Nothing on your level for sure. Shitty dreams, occasionally he had a waking vision or something. Why?”

“It was like… my vision overlapped his? I’m not sure, and it’s not like I have someone to ask if that’s normal or not.”

“That’s why we got out of there so quick.” Donna stretches her arm about Patience too, sandwiching her between them.

She relaxes a bit, smiles at them both.

“Yeah, that… even if you only saw what he saw, yeah. You would.” Dean yawns, barely covering up the microphone. “Do y’all need anything else? It’s pretty late.”

Jody glances over at the alarm clock and blinks. She’d realized it was late when she called, but nearly eleven here means almost one there. “Shit. Sorry, Dean. Get some rest. We’ll call about the rest in the morning.”

“‘lright. Night.” He hangs up before they can say anything else.

“Same for us, I think,” Donna says. “Even if we decide we want to do something about the weirdness, we need to get some sleep first.”

Jody nods and heads towards the bathroom to get changed and take some more painkillers. “Night, ladies.”

Donna and Patience are asleep on the two beds when she comes back out. Frowning, she looks at the tiny (uncomfortable) couch and shrugs. Fuck it. It’s not like it’s the first time she and Donna have shared a bed.


End file.
